It seems like this is going to be an extraordinarily downbeat album, which is kind of amazing considering that it's a huge Hollywood blockbuster soundtrack being marketed to teenagers. The "Hearing Damage" snippet is all blips and moans and fluttering percussion. "Rosyln" seems to be way more Bon Iver than St. Vincent, with Annie Clark's vocals adding an extra ghostly quality. Lykke Li's "Possibility" sounds like one of her plaintive, spare piano ballads. Grizzly Bear's "Slow Life", a collaboration with Beach House's Victoria Legrand, gorgeously elegiac. Even journeymen like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and OK Go seem to be in somber moods. (We've already heard--and seen the video for-- Death Cab for Cutie's gloomy single "Meet Me on the Equinox".)

Remember when every movie about teenagers had "Semi-Charmed Life" on the soundtrack? Man, times have changed.